[33-1] The language of the vellum AM. 557 is somewhat different in this and the previous sentence. It does not say that “they sailed southward along the land for a long time, and came to a cape,” but, “when two dœgr had elapsed, they descried land, and they sailed off this land; there was a cape to which they came. They beat into the wind along this coast, having the land upon the starboard side. This was a bleak coast, with long and sandy shores. They went ashore in boats, and found the keel of a ship, so they called it Keelness there; they likewise gave a name to the strands and called them Wonderstrands, because they were long to sail by.”
[33-2] AM. 557 says biafal. Neither word has been identified.
[33-3] Hauk’s Book says “eider-ducks.”
[34-1] The god Thor.
[35-1] The prose sense is: “Men promised me, when I came hither, that I should have the best of drink; it behooves me before all to blame the land. See, oh, man! how I must raise the pail; instead of drinking wine, I have to stoop to the spring” (Reeves).
[35-2] The prose sense is: “Let us return to our countrymen, leaving those who like the country here, to cook their whale on Wonder-strand.” From an archaic form in these lines it is apparent that they are older than either of the vellums, and must have been composed at least a century before Hauk’s Book was written; they may well be much older than the beginning of the thirteenth century (Reeves). The antiquity of the verses of the saga is also attested by a certain metrical irregularity, as in poetry of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries (Storm).
[35-3] In the next sentence the authority for this doubtful statement seems to be placed upon “traders.”
[36-1] Note the word “hollows” with reference to the contention that “wild wheat” is “wild rice.” See [p. 25, note 3].
[36-2] “Skin-canoes,” or kayaks, lead one to think of Eskimos. Both Storm and Fiske think that the authorities of the saga-writer may have failed to distinguish between bark-canoes and skin-canoes.
[36-3] The vellum AM. 557 says “small men” instead of “swarthy men.” The explorers called them Skrælingar, a disparaging epithet, meaning inferior people, i.e., savages. The name is applied, in saga literature, to the natives of Greenland as well as to the natives of Vinland. Storm thinks the latter were the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia.